At JCL, we manage the billing needs for several dozen Internal Medicine and GP hospitalists. These physicians serve a very important role in a hospital setting because they provide daily monitoring and care for in-patients. Hospitalists provide routine care as Most Responsible Physician, but are also expected to provide acute support when necessary. Furthermore, hospitalists are frequently the physicians who first recognize when problems are getting worse and when other specialists need to be consulted.
OHIP Hospitalist Billing
The field of Hospitalist medicine is a rather recent development in patient care. Only over the past two decades have hospitals invested in and attempted to broaden their hospitalist medicine programs. Hospitalists are unique in that they are defined – along with Emergency Department and ICU physicians – partially by the location of their services rather than by the physiological system they specialize in, as is the case with other specialties such as Cardiology. These two factors combine to create a web of OHIP billing rules and regulations that are sometimes confusing, can be frustrating, but from the perspective of a billing agent, are endlessly fascinating.
This has prompted us to explore various aspects of medical billing that are largely unique to hospitalists in a new section of our blog. Here are some of the issues we plan to write about:
- which codes can be billed with MRP codes
- why the Ministry of Health should add a ‘transfer of care’ code
- the E082 and E083 premiums
- when it’s ok to bill discharge codes
If there are other questions about hospitalist billing that you’d like to see us address, you can request a blog through our website to make your suggestions.